Goose or gander?

March 28, 2013

The Texas senate recently approved a bill that would limit future statewide office holders to two consecutive terms.  The bill goes to the house of representatives next.

Ultimately the issue would have to go before the voters in the form of a constitutional amendment before it would take effect.

Noticeably absent in the bill is any restriction on members of the legislature — they are not elected statewide.  The can serve as long as the voters choose while offices like the governor, attorney general, comptroller and such will have term limits.

Hypocrites.

We deserve better

Brutus

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What is thy bidding my master?

March 21, 2013

This issue has a lot of angles to it — it is hard to figure out where to start.

According to The El Paso Times article  the  El Paso Firemen and Policemen’s Pension Fund is considering buying a building.  They currently lease space in a downtown high-rise.  They have seven employees and serve about 3,200 members.  Their current rent is about $85,000 per year.  The new building would cost them somewhere around $600,000.  It would be about 6,800 square feet and have a large parking lot.

The Times says that the purchase “comes  at a strange time” with the pension fund having a shortfall of $270 million.

Ok, let’s start:

  • $85,000 dollars a year for office space and meeting areas for an organization that has seven employees is a lot of money
  • The chief financial officer of the city, who is a member of the pension board, was quoted as saying “It should pay for itself in about seven or eight years…”.
  • Why would the Times think that saving money today and over the long run is a “strange time”?

Then look at the cost of the current space:

  • $85,000 dollars a year for seven employees and the few members that they can serve at a time is a lot of money
  • Private businesses make do with a lot less space and cost per employee
  • If they need to have large meeting facilities they should rent them as they need them, not pay for them every month
  • What kind of board of directors wastes membership money like this?

Is the board considering leasing out part of the new building to some other agency and thus generating money for their members?

The city staff comes across as they normally do:

  • A city council member suggested that the board should have explored other options with the city
  • According to the article the city manager said “said such a deal would have been possible and tried to reach out to the fund.”
  • The board member who is also the chief financial officer of the city endorsed buying the building and was quoted as saying “I think it’s a good deal for the fund based on what was presented to the board…”.
  • Did the city manager reach out to the chief financial officer?  How far would the reach have to be?  These people see each other daily.  Do the city manager and chief financial officer disagree, or is someone not telling the truth?

Why does this organization even exist?

  • Texas has statewide pension organizations for other types of employees.  Teachers, municipal employees, state employees all benefit from having organizations that function statewide.
  • We don’t see a separate pension fund for teachers in El Paso and separate ones for each city in Texas.
  • We do see separate police and/or firefighter pension organizations in several Texas cities.  Why?  Would centralization save administrative costs and thus allow more money to go to the members?  Does our El Paso organization do a better job of investing money than the organizations in other cities?  Why do we have a $270 million shortfall?  Wouldn’t a statewide organization have a better chance of paying for talent to get the best investment results?

Once again, why was the Times concerned about the timing of this deal?  Were they just carrying the water for the city?

We deserve better

Brutus

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Bad influence

March 20, 2013

Audits of the Canutillo Independent School District have recently revealed that district employees may have  manipulated the grade level of some high school students in order to obtain better results relating to federal accountability standards.

Texas mandates testing of 10th graders to see how schools are performing.  By holding potentially low scoring students back in the 9th grade or promoting them to the 11th grade testing can be avoided.

The district has announced that some administrators will be demoted, receive pay cuts, and be placed back in classroom teaching positions.

Stop!

  • What will they teach?  Ethics?  Creative problem solving? What is the board doing to the children?
  • Did the district have teaching positions open already?  Will these administrators use seniority to bump out new teachers?
  • Have these employees had the interests of the students at heart, or were they only worried about their careers?

It is bad enough that administrators make more money than teachers.  It is worse that school districts regularly take their best teachers out of the classroom and place them in administrative jobs.

I don’t know any of the individuals involved.  Nor do I know what they have or have not done.  If they have done something wrong why are they still employed?

Does the board care about the students?

We deserve better

Brutus

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We do unto others

March 18, 2013

Don’t do unto us!

At last week’s (March 12, 2013) city council meeting the TxDOT district engineer gave a presentation about TxDOT’s plans for far east Montana street.

They plan to widen the street from four lanes to six starting about 1/2 mile east of Yarbrough all the way out to Loop 375.  The south side will have bicycle lanes, sidewalks and landscaping.  The north side (think airport) will be where the majority of the new lanes come from and will not have these features.

The engineer explained that about 50,000 cars use the area each day now and that they expect that number to rise to about 200,000 a day within 5 years.  Now is the time to widen the road.

Two city representatives immediately objected.  It seems that TxDOT has not kept council informed and that building a highway is not appropriate in a “highly residential area”.  The El Paso Times attributed this quote to one of the representatives:  “I think the problem is we’re getting a lot of these plans piecemeal from TxDOT instead of seeing the whole picture.  …  It can be frustrating”.

No kidding!  That is what council and city staff have been doing to the voters on this entire city hall, ballpark issue.  We still don’t know the scope of what they are doing to us.

In this case though, TxDOT is going to pay for the improvements.  This is money that we are getting back from the state, not new money that we must pay through our city taxes.

Residential?

Not hardly.  The north (airport) side of Montana in that area is essentially desolate.  There are a few government buildings on that side, with relatively few private establishments.  I know of no housing there.  The south side is largely vacant.  What has been built is primarily retail and light industrial with a sprinkling of junk yards.  There are a few apartments and condominiums on the south side, but housing development has not really occurred there.  This is not a “highly residential area”.

Beyond that, TxDOT has promised to build a sound wall if the majority of the residents want one.

Why are the city representatives in an uproar?  We certainly need to have roads that can handle additional capacity.  Montana is not a residential street.  It is a main thoroughfare in that part of town.  Can it be that our two city representatives don’t want someone springing a plan on them without their input?

Maybe now they may have a bit of understanding about how we feel.

Then again maybe they think that as city representatives they should be treated with more deference than us “crazies”.

Or maybe money is involved.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | Ball park, City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
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Now that you’re watching

March 5, 2013

According to an El Paso Times article city council may be having second thoughts about their proposal to cripple the Texas Public Information Act.

Council voted unanimously to approve the ordinance on its first reading last week.  They are scheduled to consider it again today (Tuesday March 5, 2013).

The Times points out that a “barrage of criticism” might cause council to reconsider and “go back to the drawing board” with the ordinance.

Reconsidering is a good idea.  The legal mess that this ordinance would cause would cost us a lot of money.  Texas has a good law — it appears that the rest of the state can live with it.  Some members of our council want the right to conduct public business without the public having the right to see what they are up to.  Going back to the drawing board is a bad idea.  It would be another waste of our time and money.

The Times article suggests that some council members believe that the proposed ordinance is not well written.  It would appear that some of them have finally gotten around to reading it.

That brings up the point of this post.  According to an El Paso Inc. article this weekend the proposed ordinance was drawn up by the law firm that is representing the city against the Attorney General of Texas who had previously ruled that the city must turn over documents that were requested through the Public Information Act.  City council does not want to release the documents.

  • Why are we wasting our taxpayer money and time in a mean-spirited fight to deny the public access to its’ documents?
  • If certain city council members object to disclosure why don’t they fund the lawsuit themselves?  The Attorney General is on the side of the citizens.  Council is opposing us and is using our money to do it.
  • The outside law firm did a poor job drafting the ordinance.  Are they competent?  How much are they getting paid to sue Texas and try to keep us in the dark?  How much are they getting paid to write the proposed ordinance that has now been so thoroughly criticized?
  • Should they be fired?

Where was the City Attorney on this?  How did this even get on an agenda?  Was this reviewed?  Was council advised that the proposed ordinance is “a can of worms” to use the Mayor’s words?  Is council now pretending that this was not what they intended?

It is good that the Times has started to pay attention to what is going on at city hall.  If they want fresh front page articles to replace their constant reiteration of problems over at the El Paso Independent School District, all they have to do is read city council agendas and start thinking.  They won’t even have to make up problems.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
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